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W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

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Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#721

Post by jjeaff »

slrz wrote: post #623
DrJokepu wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not possible on any open-source operating system So where do you get more than 720p if you don't get it neither on open source operating systems nor on Chrome on Windows? If you get 720p max everywhere, why do you think this has anything to do with DRM?

You do get better quality, but only if your system has an OS-level DRM implementation and the browser uses it. This is the case for IE Edge on recent Windows, but not much else. Chrome on Windows uses its own Widevine DRM implementation instead of the OS-integrated one. This shitshow is referred to as "robustness requirements" and Netflix apparently agreed to serve high-resolution video only to DRM implementations of…

All this complexity to protect the content and yet there isn't a movie or TV show out there you can't find in crisp 1080p on Usenet or torrent sites with one quick search.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#722

Post by pedrocr »

DrJokepu wrote: post #539
pedrocr wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Google Chrome on Windows must be a niche thing then. Because that only gets 720p.

> Not possible on any open-source operating system So where do you get more than 720p if you don't get it neither on open source operating systems nor on Chrome on Windows? If you get 720p max everywhere, why do you think this has anything to do with DRM?

You can see the system requirements here:

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742

1080p is available on Explorer/Windows and Safari/OSX. 4K is available on Edge/Windows with HDCP 2.2 and "Intel's 7th generation Core CPU".

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#723

Post by mtgx »

Iv wrote: post #628
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

Basically, unless you are writing a browser with decent marketshare, you defacto have no voice in making the standards. Basically, the only voices that matter are Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google(Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge/Explorer). Despite what any standard says, web developers are going to go by the behavior of the browsers do. The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to…

It took me a while to understand how politics are very different than the binary world of logic and strictly enforced rule of my CS universe. In politics, very often, there are no strictly enforced rules, there are groups of pressures pushing in opposing directions. W3C has no way to prevent proprietary browsers for doing what they want, they just put some pressure on them. They know that going through W3C is the eas…

> This is a small amount of pushing power.

Not true. See Google's NaCl and Mozilla and Microsoft's own alternatives to that. Neither went anywhere because each browser pushed in a different direction. It's only through W3C that they managed to build WebAssembly and all agree to use it.

I see this DRM thing the same way. Without W3C they may have built their own DRM solutions (and in fact, they have, years ago), but they wouldn't be compatible with each other, which means they wouldn't get too much adoption either.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#724

Post by netgusto »

l0b0 wrote: post #716
near wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web has been engineered to a complexity level so grossly obscene that it is all but impossible for independent developers to produce fully independent web browsers anymore. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and strong leadership to produce a browser that would be successful in today's world. I could dedicate the rest of my life working 100 hours a week on a browser, and I would die before…

You wouldn't need to scrap all of it by a long shot. You could take a small subset of the stack and make something enormously simpler to implement. Start with supporting only one version of HTTP, TLS, (X)HTML, CSS and JS and fork them if necessary. Even drop CSS to start with and finally start relying on semantic markup and good browser defaults. Use existing open source libraries where available, such as for TLS and…

Now that's an idea I could get behind !

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#725

Post by mtgx »

jandrese wrote: post #6
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

Basically, unless you are writing a browser with decent marketshare, you defacto have no voice in making the standards. Basically, the only voices that matter are Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google(Chrome), and Microsoft (Edge/Explorer). Despite what any standard says, web developers are going to go by the behavior of the browsers do. The only company on the list of browser makers that really has any desire to…

This is really the issue. If we could convince media rightsholders that DRM is harmful and unnecessary then all of this heartache wouldn't be necessary. I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime. Any slight glimmer of hope from Apple ditching DRM on iTunes has died as nobody else shows the slightest interest in following their lead.

> If we could convince media rightsholders

Even that is not ultimately necessary. What we need to do is convince politicians that it's a bad thing, and in theory we should have a lot more influence over those. They can pass the necessary laws to say DRM is illegal and it would be much better plus potentially easier than crawling and begging to the media companies to throw us a bone.

In practice it's not so easy because the US has a broken and corrupt political system where the politicians are more dependent on rich donors than on the People who vote for them.

So once again we arrive to the same conclusion Larry Lessig did many years ago: if you want to fix the copyright issues, or the climate issues, or healthcare issues, or any other big issue, you need to fix money in politics first. Everyone on all sides, no matter what other conflicting issues they have with each other, should be working hard on that issue if they want any hope for their other issues.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#727

Post by onion2k »

isostatic wrote: post #705
jandrese wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the issue. If we could convince media rightsholders that DRM is harmful and unnecessary then all of this heartache wouldn't be necessary. I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime. Any slight glimmer of hope from Apple ditching DRM on iTunes has died as nobody else shows the slightest interest in following their lead.

Didn't I used to be able to buy mp3s from amazon - no DRM? That was before spotify and other streaming solutions of course. Do people want DRM-free media, or do they want ease of use?

Do people want DRM-free media, or do they want ease of use?

There's no technical reason why there has to be a choice between the two. Spotify could implement 'Save to device' or 'Share this song offline' features very easily. The only reason they don't is down to the politics of ownership.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#728

Post by kagamine »

thinkloop wrote: post #717
near wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web has been engineered to a complexity level so grossly obscene that it is all but impossible for independent developers to produce fully independent web browsers anymore. You would need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and strong leadership to produce a browser that would be successful in today's world. I could dedicate the rest of my life working 100 hours a week on a browser, and I would die before…

> If people want to do something about it, they need to fork the web itself. HTTP, TLS, HTML, CSS, JS ... the entire stack needs to be scrapped and replaced with something sensible with a focus on simplicity. That's flash.

> That's flash

Comedy aside, CSS isn't the problem, but if an experienced web-dev can't make a site without learning for 5+ years and then feel like they have no knowledge of web development then we have a problem, and that's where we are now.

The problem with the long list of frameworks and libraries available is that there is no easy way to make a web2.0 site without years and years of learning and then the resulting site is a mish-mash of what works without it being easy to maintain. Sitting here looking at .NET & angularjs 1.x and wondering where it all went wrong (actually, not the.,NET part, that seems to work).

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#729

Post by flukus »

dingo_bat wrote: post #664
flukus wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to DRM it's the only (legal) way I can watch it on my computer.

You can download the app.

Only if there is an app for your OS that's up to date.

More importantly, I'd prefer not to use the netflix app/site at all. I'd much prefer to pay for content and have a variety of apps to choose from.

Re: W3C abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

#730

Post by favorited »

shmerl wrote: post #603
favorited wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W3C is not an organization focused on morals. It is an organization which exists to advocate for and codify open web standards (note, not an open web, but open standards ).

They sold out those standards to DRM proponents, so that ends the trust of them working for the common good.

Again, they're not charged with "the common good." Their goal is, "if there is going to be DRM content served via HTTP + web browsers, we should provide a standard API for it so browsers can implement it natively without plugins."

Their place is to be pragmatic and technical, not political.

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